


A Brand New Box of Matches (You'll Never Get Burnt)

by tomato_greens



Category: I Want To Go Home! - Gordon Korman, Macdonald Hall - Gordon Korman
Genre: Homophobia, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, a brief flirtation with alcoholism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-23
Updated: 2012-02-23
Packaged: 2017-10-31 15:12:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,078
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/345559
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tomato_greens/pseuds/tomato_greens
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The problem is that nobody knows how fucking terrifying it is to be Bruno Walton all the time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Brand New Box of Matches (You'll Never Get Burnt)

I. JUNE 23, 1988

The problem is that nobody knows how fucking terrifying it is to be Bruno Walton all the time. 

It wasn’t like when he was thirteen and angry and really didn’t have any nerves; he didn’t have anything to lose then, just two suitcases and a letter from his sister and a roommate with a stupid name. 

(“God, Melvin, really?” Bruno had asked the first afternoon in 306, eyeing the skinny blond length of him up and down with what was mostly distaste.

“Is this what it’s going to be like living with you all year?” Melvin had answered, his cheeks red, shoving socks haphazardly in a drawer. “Yes, it’s Melvin, all right?”

“And you don’t have a nickname or anything?” Bruno wondered aloud. 

“Not for lack of trying,” Melvin muttered. He slammed the drawer shut and pointed a finger at Bruno. “If you so much as touch my stuff while I’m not looking, I’ll skin you alive.”

“There’s more than one way to skin a cat,” said Bruno, mostly to be irritating.

“Ugh,” said Melvin, “I wish you were a cat. At least then you couldn’t talk.”)

But it’s been years and he’s accumulated things––beat-up sneakers and too-shiny textbooks, a scrapbook Mark Davies put together from back issues of the _Student Times_ , a compass sharp enough to be a weapon, and now, stuffed back into his suitcase since everything’s over, a cap and gown, though he later noticed he’d retrieved the cap with a neat _Melvin P. O’Neal_ markered into the band when they were picking them up off the field––and yet he still has to be the same old crazy Bruno, who fights for what he loves like he doesn’t care what happens to him, who can build a riot out of six reluctant boys and a zucchini stick. 

Boots bursts in on him, wild-eyed and flushed, chest heaving. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you,” he says, “I didn’t think you’d come all the way back here.” 

Bruno waves the lousier of his two lousy watches, which he’d forgotten in his desk, in explanation. “I always forget something.”

“Edward wants to say good-bye,” says Boots, rolling his eyes.

“Like he’ll never see me again,” Bruno scoffs, “he’s the brother of my––”

“Bruno,” Boots says warningly.

“I know, I know,” Bruno sighs, and holds out a hand as imperiously as he can. “Help me up.”

Boots hauls him to his feet and then doesn’t let go quickly enough. Their hands tangle, fingers fitting into fingers with the ease of long habit. “Shit,” Boots says, sounding a little spooked, although he doesn’t let go.

“Yeah,” Bruno agrees, closing his eyes, leaning his forehead on Boots’s shoulder. “Fuck. Why am I going so far away?”

He can feel Boots shake his head. “Don’t. We’ve got ages yet.” 

So Bruno doesn’t. But god, he thinks as they wander back out to the athletic field where everyone is still recovering from Elmer’s valedictorian speech, god, he’s scared.

 

II. JULY 4, 1988

Bruno is technically American but he’s spent all the time that counts in Canada, which means the matter of his citizenship is a little fucked up. Still, hot dogs and illicit sips of beer are never bad, and when you add fireworks and Sousaphones and Boots looking red-cheeked and confused on the sidelines, it’s even pretty fun.

Bruno’s little sister Stella is a horror of a sixteen-year-old, so she makes a beeline for Boots and grabs his jaw and checks his teeth, and turns him around appraisingly. “Nice bone structure,” she comments. “Could lose a little baby fat under the chin, maybe, but not too shabby.”

“Thanks, I think,” Boots says, sounding bemused. 

Bruno can’t see what’s happening after that because he’s hidden his face in his hands, but it ends with Boots catching him around the neck and dragging him out to the porch to watch the parade, Stella narrowing her eyes at them suspiciously.

That night when Boots is taking his time in the shower, she corners Bruno in his bedroom and holds a red, white, and blue plastic water pistol to his head. “So, talk,” she says, one foot on Boots’s pillow on the floor and one on Bruno’s knee.

“What about?” Bruno asks, his voice cracking on the question as if he’s thirteen and stupid instead of eighteen and stupid. Her toenails, he notices distantly, are purple. 

“What about,” she mocks, rolling her eyes like a horse. Bruno doesn’t know where she got it from. “Boots, dumbass.”

“What about Boots?” Bruno asks, contriving to keep his voice clear of guilt, which only sort of works because he ends up cracking again. Upon closer inspection the toenails are revealed to also be sparkly. Jesus Christ. His sister is a monster.

(By October, Bruno had calmed down a little, and Melvin turned out to be as blond and athletic as he looked, but altogether not as bad as you’d expect for a blond athletic guy named Melvin.

Then one morning, Bruno entered puberty with a vengeance. He didn’t realize at first because it’s not like he’d had breakfast to prepare himself––he went straight to math class, as usual, and he’d been at the board in the middle of trying to factor a polynomial when his voice made an involuntarily horrendous noise, like brakes squealing, and then went ahead and gave out on him. 

He’d only known these guys for a month at this point; they owed him no loyalty, and he hadn’t yet learned to play to a crowd. Practically all of them were fuck-ups, anyway, like Bruno was himself, and they were all desperate not to be the butt of the joke, so first Pete Anderson let out a huge ugly snort and then Mark Davies joined in, said, “Wow, Walton, didn’t know you double-timed it as a chew toy,” like that even made any sense. Wilbur’d been laughing too hard to even comment; he hadn’t yet been lifting weights regularly, so his face was complacent with puppy fat, and Bruno found himself clutching the chalk like a lifeline, like it was the only thing keeping him from punching Wilbur in his stupid face. Probably it was.

Mr. Stratton was mumbling something ineffectual in the background, his hands out placatingly. Bruno held on to the chalk even tighter, too afraid for the first time in his life to even open his mouth to defend himself, standing there frozen.

“Jeez, like you guys never heard the mating call of the Rarer Chimerian Duck before,” Melvin had cut in before it went too much further. “Bruno’s been practicing his bird calls in our room and I guess it’s become such a habit that he didn’t even realize where he is anymore. You know he never gets up for breakfast, even on Pancake Tuesday, so he doesn’t have the regular buffer that most of us have to get ready for classes.” It was perfect; it was so patently ridiculous that everyone had shut up, not yet aware that they would spend the next six years and change doing absolutely ridiculous and impossible things, often before breakfast.

And Bruno had smiled at Melvin, who had smiled back at him, not patronizing like Mr. Stratton but simply sharing the joke. “Sorry about that, Mr. Stratton,” he’d said, finding his voice steadier than he’d expected. “I’ll try to keep the duck calls to my private life. They’re a surprisingly addictive habit, you know.”)

“I can’t believe you,” Stella grumbles, lining her sights up with the very center of his forehead. “You are, in fact, unbelievable.” She squirts him with deadly accuracy and then flops across his lap, a carefully calibrated lump, her elbow five warning inches from some very tender areas. “Tell me what’s going on or I’ll hit you like I did at my fifth birthday party, except a lot harder. I’ve got practice now, you know.”

Bruno winces at the memory, automatically curling into himself, but that backfires because her elbow only gets closer. “Nothing’s going on,” he says. He’s said it so many times, in front of bathroom mirrors and glass doors and occasionally the Hall’s swimming pool, imagining the Fish’s disgust in horrible detail, that he’s gone past the stiff, over-practiced stage and now it comes out easily––casual, natural, like he believes it. “It’s the same as it’s always been.”

She shakes her head at him, then pats him pityingly on the side of the face. “If you say so, loser,” she says, and sighs. “You should really tap that while the going’s good, though.”

“Hey!” Bruno exclaims, sitting up. “Don’t talk about Boots like that!”

“Don’t talk about Boots like what?” Boots asks, toweling his hair briskly, in pajama pants but missing a shirt, framed by Bruno’s doorway.

“Like nothing,” Bruno says loudly, glaring. “Stella was just leaving.” 

Stella stands up, all grace, too thin like Bruno is but it looks better on her, with her dark hair a huge soft wave around her face. She looks fragile, somehow, instead of like a Q-tip or some species of tufted beanpole, which is the closest thing Bruno resembles. “I was just leaving,” she agrees, and shoots Boots square between the eyes. 

“Hey!” he calls after her, wiping his forehead off as he closes the door and collapses on the bed next to Bruno. “What’s eating her?”

“No idea,” Bruno says. His hand finds its way to the small of Boots’s back without his brain ever actively engaging in the process; Boots sighs contentedly and leans against him. “I never know what’s going on in her head.”

 

III. AUGUST 29, 1988

“Hey, Boots, it’s me. Just calling to say good luck tomorrow. And I’ll see you soon or whatever. We’ll be fine. Plus it’s not even that long until break, so it’s not so bad, right? Okay. Write to me. I don’t really understand how e-mail works but my little sister assures me that computers have come a long way since Mr. Wizzle’s modernization of the Hall, so that’s all good. They can fit more than one in a room now, even. So we should work on that. But anyway, letters work, too, and I know how stamps work for sure so maybe nothing will even blow up, which would actually be a nice change since I’m not sure I’ll be guaranteed any fundraising buddies since you guys will all be in Canada and I’ll be––well. I’ll see you later. Soon. Hi, Edward, by the way. I know you’re pining from my absence and all, but don’t worry, I haven’t forgotten you. Remember the sanctity of Macdonald Hall above all else! Anyway. Bye, Melvin. Call me later, if you’re free.”

 

IV. SEPTEMBER 15, 1988

Bruno feels overstimulated and underwhelmed, like nothing’s quite as difficult as he expected it to be but there’s still way too much of it. He didn’t expect to get into Georgetown, he only applied as a last-minute hats off to his high school career of rabble-rousing, but then they must have liked his essay–– _The Power of the Microcosm; or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying And Love The Chaotic Social Periphery_ , half the title courtesy of Boots’s thesaurus and the rest from Jordie Jones’s Extremely Long List Of Movies Bruno Should Never See, And By Never I Mean Immediately––because it’s been two weeks and so far his name’s been on all the attendance lists. 

(“I don’t know how it happened,” Bruno had said, scowling at the ceiling. He could feel the force of Melvin’s glare from all the way across 306. 

“Yeah, right,” Melvin snorted. “You’re the only guy in school who knows what the P. stands for, and only because you read a letter that wasn’t even addressed to you––”

“I thought it was from my sister!” Bruno yelled, wincing from the unfairness of it all.

“Yeah, well, it wasn’t,” Melvin snapped, “so whatever, just because all the available evidence points to you and, oh, yeah, you don’t like me and are itching to humiliate me––”

“I like you,” Bruno interrupted.

Melvin looks at him oddly. “What?” he asked, clearly derailed.

“I like you,” Bruno enunciated. “Since when haven’t I liked you?”

Melvin looked distinctly uncomfortable. “Well, we fought last week,” he said. “I thought––”

“So we fought,” Bruno agreed, then dismissed it with a wave of his hand. “People fight all the time.”

“Usually they fight with people they don’t like,” Melvin pointed out.

“Nah, doesn’t your family ever get in funks and fight it out?” Bruno asked. “Mine does. It’s how people operate. It doesn’t mean I don’t like you, it means we had a––a temporary difference of opinion.”

The air was thick in its silence, heavy, telling. It felt like an entirely different kind of fight was going on, fiercely quiet, and Bruno was hesitant to disrupt it for fear of upsetting the balance the wrong way. Eventually Melvin smiled at him and said, “I guess it was an office mistake that put me as Percival on roll call.”

Bruno heaved a sigh of relief and grinned at him. “Seriously! Melvin Percival? Were your parents trying to kill you before the age of ten?”

“Well, I was a bit of a surprise,” Melvin admitted, and the air cleared, just like that, and Bruno could breathe again.)

He misses Boots, though, Boots who is his better half––except not, of course, since that’s pretty gay and even in Canada most people don’t do that kind of thing in public, but Bruno’s trying out this new policy where he can only lie to himself once a day––and though he’s met a couple of okay people here, they’re all sort of like him, odd and restless and with a tendency towards exuberant mischief: complimenting, not complementing. 

Bruno’s mother always liked to tell him that Boots was a calming influence, but Bruno had never bought a word of it; now that Boots wasn’t here, Bruno was surer than ever. Boots had never _calmed_ him––Bruno had put up the white flag of surrender, had let himself be tamed.

 

V. OCTOBER 31. 1988

Since school started in September, Bruno has found countless peons who worship his giant rhetorical intellect and modest character, a fair number of classroom acquaintances from whom he can bum a smoke or a beer, two incredibly irritating Wexford-Smythe-alikes whom he plans to crush humiliatingly in his iron fist one day, and exactly one actual friend, Vicky Webster, who he met the day after she decided to break up with her asshole of a boyfriend when he inquired about her spectacular black eye and who he physically let cry on his shoulder shortly afterward in a horrific display of emotion that has surely bonded them to each other for life. She reminds him an awful lot of Stella, except she's Canadian––go figure––and thus slightly more likely to say "excuse me" before pushing him out of her way.

They’re getting ready to go out for Halloween in Bruno’s room, since his roommate has a girlfriend and is almost never around; Vicky decided weeks ago to be Madonna, and Bruno, feeling similarly experimental but wanting to keep to the theme, has commandeered all of her glittery eye shadow and a shiny gold pair of her leggings in order to transform himself into David Bowie. He’s pretty sure he’s popular enough that he can get away with it. Vicky ends up rooting around his underwear drawer for his old pair of suspenders, since she’s borrowing a pair of his dress trousers and they tend to fall off her, and comes up with a very odd expression on her face.

“What?” says Bruno, distracted, trying to draw a lightning bolt on his face.

Vicky holds out a fistful of ragged papers, torn from notebooks or pilfered typing paper, some wrinkled and soft with age––“Sorry,” she’s saying, while Bruno frowns at the paper, trying to figure out what it even is, “sorry, I didn’t mean to, it was under your boxers and I saw it––”

And Bruno remembers suddenly and in full horribly embarrassing detail.

( _December 27, 1983  
Dear Bruno,_

_It is pretty cold here, too. Christmas is as boring as usual without all of the guys around. I hope you are doing fine and did not set your dad on fire like you did last year. That was a good story._

_Your friend,  
Melvin_

_February 23, 1986  
Dear Bruno,_

_My mother told me I had to write you a thank you letter before we get back to the Hall even though I live with you nine months out of the year and see you all the time and told you thank you in person at least four times and also your parents. This doesn’t make any sense if you ask me but I don’t want to make my mom sad, so thank you for inviting me to your house for winter break, it was really fun even if Maryland does not appear to understand how snow works._

_Thanks,  
Boots_

_P.S. You are invited to my house from July 14-July 25, please RSVP at your earliest convenience. You do not actually have to write a letter, though, please just tell me since it’s a lot easier if you throw a pen at me or something to get my attention instead of mailing my parents, which would just be awkward. Also please say yes, because it’s the only break I’ll get from my little brother Edward all summer!_

_what is the date? I don’t know anymore but if I did i would writ it here.  
Bruno Burno Bruno,_

_I May be a littel bit druNk. Actually I am definititely 100% drinkenly writing you, my roommate who is NOT YOU has poured ALl the beer down my throt. but since you & Cathy & DIane are the one Who introduced me to alcoholl anyway I dont evn care. and probaby you also dont care? I hope not. Anyway the point of this Letter is to tell you that I wish you were the persn pouring beer down my throat, or possibly other things, like yr mom’s tuna surprise. HAHa, what did you think I was goin to say????? I miss you man._

_I am deifinteitely not going to sent this. I borrowd my rommates typewriter to make it more professional looking but I dont think I’m that good at using it ytt. I’ll practice on an evnelope too but I will not send it._

_Love,  
MELVIN P, O” NEAL aka your friend BOOTS_ )

Bruno snatches the papers out of Vicky’s hand and smooths them out as best he can. There are exactly eight of them, he knows, picked each of them out, one from each year of knowing Boots, a friendship in summary. “That was private,” he says, although he feels more shocked than anything else. It’s a strange feeling; the _snap, whizz, boom_ of anger is something he knows intimately, but this paralytic numbness is utterly unfamiliar. 

“Sorry,” she repeats, looking dumbfounded. “I’ll––I didn’t mean to––look, sorry.”

Bruno doesn’t say something like, _It’s okay_ , because it’s not, really, even though he’s not angry he still feels like the small, vulnerable part of himself he keeps hidden away in his gut has been pulled out and displayed. He shrugs. “It is what it is,” he says, and puts the letters back where she found them.

They go out, still, and it’s fun, the slight awkwardness of discovery soon smoothed over by judicious application of cheapo beer and honest-to-God fountains of jungle juice, and despite the eyeshadow Bruno gets hit on no fewer than eight times by seven different girls––one is either very drunk or very desperate or, more probably, both; he ends up making out with her out of pity for about thirty seconds before realizing she tastes too much like vomit for him even to pretend to enjoy it, and also, it makes the constant ache of Boots’s absence hurt even worse. But Vicky makes out with her too for considerably longer, so whatever.

“Had fun?” Bruno asks when she comes back, shaking the sweat out of her hair, her make-up not exactly smeared––she’d used the heavy duty stuff––but definitely tampered with.

“You bet,” she says, “although I don’t think I’m cut out for that scene exactly because the only way I could get into it was pretending her hair was long because she was Kurt Cobain and had spontaneously grown breasts.”

Bruno guffaws, huge embarrassing sobs of laughter totally out of proportion to the entire ridiculous thing, and takes the apology for what it is. Later when they’re walking home, he puts his arm around her shoulders and says, “He’s my best friend, you know?”

Vicky slings her own arm around his waist and says, “I get it.” She looks to see if anyone’s around––it’s three in the morning the day after Halloween on a college campus, so of course there are, but they’re all preoccupied by sex or alcohol or staying upright. “My older brother’s got a best friend, too.”

Bruno feels his breath go shocky. “Yeah?” he asks. 

Vicky nods. “Mike, my brother, he’s the dorkiest guy on the planet but he met Rudy at, like, some summer camp or something when they were thirteen, and they’ve been best friends ever since even though Rudy could obviously do a million times better.”

Bruno doesn’t know how to respond. “Oh,” he says.

He feels her shrug underneath his arm. “Yeah,” she says, her voice a little teary. “Pretty sure they’re gonna get married one of these days.”

Bruno feels his face wrinkle up in exaggerated confusion. Christ, he’s never drinking again, not if it can make him feel so goddamn dizzy. “Can you even do that?” he asks. The idea seems––well, for all that Bruno has lived most of his life among boys, the idea of living with one specific one forever in the kind of kitschy domestic harmony he has always associated with the abstract idea of marriage seems utterly impossible.

“Not yet,” Vicky sighs. “Not yet.”

 

VI. NOVEMBER 24, 1988

Bruno goes home for Thanksgiving break, and for the first time in years, instead languishing away a useless weekend in October and studiously avoiding seeing anyone he went to elementary school with, he’s actually there for the holiday itself. It’s as loud and raucous as any holiday gathering of Waltons, and his grandma, who every year passes further into the second blurry youth of dementia, does her usual thing and pats him on the cheek, affectionately calling him Dave, which would be less discomfiting if anyone in the family had ever figured out who exactly Dave was. 

(The first time she’d done it, she’d called him from the nursing home his father had cried actual tears about, and when Larry gave him the message during period three History he’d flat-out run to the Fish’s office, breathing fast, his heart beating rabbit-fast behind his ribs, convinced there was an emergency, that she’d left them behind, and it wasn’t that she’d ever been that good of a grandmother––she was sixty when Bruno was born, already slipping away after the unexpected death of her husband two years before––but still, she was blood, and tied up in that were a whole slew of feelings Bruno had never bothered to sort through or even really consider until they were all running through his brain and veins and lungs at once in a hideous, terrified cacophony.

But then he picked up the phone and Grandma Walton cackled her usual cackle and said, “Dave, Dave, is that you? I’ve missed you, boy.”

And Bruno, his body shaking with relief, sat down uninvited on one of the Fish’s hard wooden office chairs and hadn’t had the heart to correct her. “Missed you too, Grandma,” he said instead.

That night, Melvin cornered him. “You okay?” he said. “I only ask because you look sort of like you want to be sick and I just finished cleaning my side of the room.”

“Yeah, I’m okay,” Bruno assured him, “just I think my grandma’s gone crazy.”

“Well, whose hasn’t?” Melvin joked, no pressure.

So when Bruno woke up from a nightmare, red-faced and crying and utterly, utterly humiliated, all Melvin did was pass him a tissue and tell him about his own crazy grandmother, who’d died in excruciating inches over the last year, alternately convinced she was in prison or in the afterlife, and who’d forgotten even her daughter’s name in her last days, and cry with him.)

“So how’s Boots?” Stella asks pointedly as she passes him the mashed potatoes, the fluffy white mound of them blocking her expression from easy view. 

Bruno scowls and grabs at the bowl, but she’s not giving it up easily. “He’s fine,” he says shortly. “Learning everything there is to know about Canadian literature.”

Stella makes a face and reflexively lets go of the potatoes, which Bruno promptly clutches to his chest. “He’s not,” she says, obviously horrified, as he scoops out a massive pile onto his plate. 

“Yeah,” Bruno says, gleeful, “isn’t it awful?”

Stella shrugs, accepting the turnips from their least favorite second cousin to her left. Neither of them can ever remember her name. “No worse than learning everything there is to know about America’s pristine political past.”

Bruno winces and holds a hand to his heart. “You wound me.”

“Good,” says Stella decisively, taking an absolutely gigantic bite of Aunt Trudy’s version of green bean casserole, which Bruno highly doubts has any actual vegetables in it.

“Who’s Boots?” asks the second cousin.

“Bruno’s boyfriend,” Stella says through her mouthful of casserole. 

The whole room immediately stops talking and swivels their heads towards Bruno like a shocked, well-oiled machine. “What?” chokes out his mother.

“He’s not,” Bruno says, blushing bright red, deer in the goddamn sisterly headlights. “He’s my friend. Stella’s being stupid.”

“Hey!” Stella objects. “Mom, he called me stupid!”

“Yeah, well, you’re spreading libel and slander about me,” Bruno practically shouts, really furious now, but before they can get into it––

“Davy always was a queer one!” his grandmother crows, and after that even his mother doesn’t object when he sneaks away the dregs of his dad’s beer.

 

VII. DECEMBER 30, 1988

Boots is waiting for him at the airport, waving just long enough to get his attention. His face is pink with warmth and he’s got truly terrible hat hair, standing out in a blond corona, and it’s all Bruno can do not to kiss him then and there. He does hug him, though, as hard as he can stand, their blue and green marshmallow coats poofing outward awkwardly.

“Hi,” Bruno says, happy, once he’s let go and put some distance in between them.

“Hi,” Boots answers, smiling hugely, and picks up Bruno’s bag like it’s a whole other kind of embrace. “Let’s go, eh?”

“You said ‘eh,’” Bruno says in amazement, following Boots out to the beat up junker of a car which he’d bought last summer with his graduation money. “I’ve never heard you say that before, who did you pick that up from? You’re obviously spending way too much time up here––come visit me next break.”

“Shut up,” Boots tells him, punching him gently in the arm, partially extricating himself from his coat in the driver’s seat, although Bruno doesn’t know how he does it with the seatbelt on or even why because frankly the heating in The Scrimmobile Mach II could use an upgrade. Then, looking decidedly shy: “Yeah, okay.”

They’re forty minutes into the hour-and-a-half drive to Boots’s house when he pulls off the highway and parks in a scenic overlook that seems more overlooked than scenic.

“Uh, Boots,” Bruno says, looking over the edge of the road into the snowy fields, “I regret to inform you that, while it may appear to you otherwise, this is not, in fact, your house––oh––” and then he cuts off because Boots is leaning way up into his space, one arm of his coat still caught between seatbelt and door, and then they’re kissing, they’re kissing, finally they’re kissing.

(“Do you ever think about what it might be like?” Melvin asked the night after they’d met Cathy and Diane for the first time, all of them out of bounds after dark; for Bruno it had been lightning and thunder, the meeting of kindred spirits, but Melvin seemed less inclined to dramatics. “Kissing a girl?”

Bruno shifted uncomfortably and pretended not to be watching Melvin from across the room. “I guess,” he said. “I mean, sometimes.”

Melvin stared up at the ceiling, oblivious to Bruno’s glances in his direction. “Yeah,” he sighed, throwing one arm behind his head. “Sometimes.”

Bruno had the sudden and totally weird desire to jump up and down, jog around the room, punch Melvin in the face––something to get his attention, to draw him away from his dreamy haze, in which he and Diane were probably already married and having lots of strong fat blond babies. He reined it in as best he could. Melvin was a pretty nice guy despite everything going against him, and deserved all the fat babies he wanted. “So Diane, huh?” 

Melvin’s nose wrinkled in distaste. “No way, she’s really nice but––” and now he turned to face Bruno, curled on his side, “if I had to pick a girl to kiss, it would probably be someone like Cathy.”

“Yeah?” Bruno asked, watching Melvin’s face.

“Yeah,” Melvin said, intently. “She’s got––you know, charisma.”

“Oh,” said Bruno, and turned on his back again, his turn to look at the ceiling now. “Yeah, I can see that.”

“Uh huh,” said Melvin. Bruno could hear the sheets moving around as he shifted, too. “And she’s got brown hair. Which I. Well.”

“Oh,” said Bruno, feeling like his face was red and not really knowing why. “I’ve always had a thing for blonds myself.”)

One thing turns into another and it ends ten minutes later, both of them shaking in the back seat, clutched together desperately, Bruno still in his giant winter coat and sweated through. 

Boots pushes back his bangs from his forehead and kisses it before wiping them up with a discarded T-shirt that had been lying around the back seat and doing his jeans up haphazardly, then taking more care and time with Bruno’s fly, kissing him on the neck, the chin, the eyelid, occasionally the mouth with every divot of the zipper, so that by the time he’s been put away he’s practically ready to go again, hips pushing reflexively against Boots’s hands.

“Think you can wait another forty-five minutes?” Boots asks speculatively, one thumb tracing the lines of Bruno’s face.

Bruno doesn’t, but he nods. “Anything––anything you say,” he pants out.

“ _Christ_ ,” Boots breathes, and only makes it another ten minutes and one more overlooked scene before he has to stop again. 

“You’re distracting me,” he explains.

“Not my fault you find me ravishing,” Bruno says with a grin. He’s finally shucked the jacket and even though the inside of the car is steadily growing colder, his shoulders feel relaxed for the first time in months.

“I’ll ravish you,” Boots mutters, starting the car, but as threats go it’s not particularly effective. 

Boots holds his hand all the way back after that, except when he needs both of his to make a difficult turn, in which case he transfers Bruno’s hand to his thigh first. Bruno feels sort of like he’s in a gay romantic comedy but, horrifyingly, can’t stop smiling.

Once they make it to chez O’Neal, they tone it down by about as many notches as they can stand to, although even still Mrs. O’Neal exclaims over the state of Bruno’s hair and Edward peers suspiciously at them from behind his mountain of winter break reading. Bruno just runs a hand sheepishly through his hair and then tousles Edward’s for him, still smiling that stupid smile at them both, before following Boots upstairs. 

Boots kicks shut his bedroom door, deposits Bruno’s bag at the foot of the bed, and gathers Bruno to him, whispering, “I missed you, I missed you, I missed you.”

“Yeah,” Bruno whispers back, toeing his shoes off clumsily as Boots pulls him down onto the bed, so that Bruno has to brace his forearms by Boots’s ears and his knees are rucked up by Boots’s hips, and then they’re kissing again, kissing just to kiss, and it feels to Bruno like they’re proving to each other that they’re here, together, in Boots’s room. He can’t stop from running his hand over Boots’s face, his arm, letting it rest on the flat plane of Boots’s belly, bringing it back up to stroke his cheek, marveling over the sheer physical presence of him. “Hi,” he says, “hi.”

“Hi,” Boots agrees, eyes crinkling happily, and tugs him down again.

They fall asleep like that, Bruno still most of the way on top of Boots, their hands and legs intertwined, until Edward clomps up the stairs to tell them dinner is ready, at which point they are sitting at opposite ends of the bed pooling gossip about the guys from the Hall and playing a high stakes game of Go Fish.

“Ugh,” Edward groans, as he leads them downstairs, “you guys are so unbelievably lame.”

“How’s that trig going for you, Eddie?” Bruno asks cruelly, which at least shuts him up, and then Boots flashes him a private smile behind Edward’s back, warming Bruno from the inside out, and, not for the first time, Bruno thinks, _God, if this is love_ , and is overcome.

 

VIII. JANUARY I, 1989

At 12:15 in the morning, Boots secrets Bruno away in the makeshift pantry, whispers with his champagned-breath, “Since I couldn’t do it at midnight,” into his mouth, and kisses him for long minutes before they wander back out to the party.

Thirteen hours later, Edward, looking straight at Boots, says, experimentally, “Hamlet was such a fag.”

Boots stiffens where he’s sitting next to Bruno on the couch, all of his muscles going tight and anxious at once. 

“Honey, we don’t use that kind of language in this house,” Mrs. O’ Neal says from the kitchen, but it’s not particularly committed, practically nothing in the face of Boots’s frown and Bruno’s reflexive fists, held creakingly tight. 

“Shut up, Edward,” Boots says, and, “Fuck off,” when Bruno reaches after him, and then he gets up and walks out the door, leaving Bruno alone there, suspended between being completely terrified and losing himself to a huge and nameless fury.

“You did this to him,” Edward hisses, pointing a finger at Bruno’s jugular, his disgust palpable. “You freak. You absolute fag.”

(The first time Bruno heard the word, it was before the Hall and it was directed at him, because he’d always been kind of puny and he had a smart mouth to boot, and so he’d labored under the misapprehension for months that it was just a way to call someone out if they didn’t have any muscles; then he’d laughed at Melvin, straining under the twenty-five pound weights his Olympic-athlete father had given him to grow into, and said, “Aw, come on, don’t be such a fag,” but then Melvin had gone white and weak with shock and said in a shaking voice, “Don’t call me that word,” and Bruno had said, “What? Fag? What’s so bad about fag?” and Melvin had knocked him down, insisting, “ _Don’t call me that,_ ” before Bruno yelled, “Uncle! Uncle!” and wriggled out from under Melvin, still thinking this was all a game, before he saw the look on Melvin’s face and realized that whatever it was, it wasn’t a game.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“Don’t say that word,” Melvin said, looking over Bruno’s shoulder. “It’s not nice.”

“I didn’t know,” Bruno said, hushed, and looked it up in the dictionary the next day during a free five minutes in English, shocking himself in the process.

“Sorry,” he told Melvin after, still not sure whether he was sorry for the insult or that the word was an insult at all, only that he was probably the sorriest he’d ever been, and definitely the sorriest he’d ever been for something that didn’t end in accidentally broken bones. “I didn’t mean anything by it.”

“Sure,” Melvin agreed, easy as pie, “I know you didn’t.”)

“Yeah, so what, Edward,” Bruno says, feeling helpless, succumbing to the terror because if he gets mad about this he’s not sure he’ll ever be able to stop. “So fucking what,” he repeats, and climbs up the stairs to Boots’s bedroom and cries a little, as much out of anger as anything else, and then goes aggressively to sleep in the sleeping bag he’s had set neatly and responsibly out by the foot of Boots’s bed for the very first time since he’s arrived.

Boots comes back in eventually, bringing a cloud of cold air with him that wakes Bruno up from his stupor. He’s managed to get his face mostly hidden beneath the sleeping bag’s top layer, but it was too stifling to curl totally into himself, so he feels Boots’s thumb trace a tear track, flip the comma of his bangs out of his eyes even though they’re closed, and for a second he thinks maybe it’s going to be okay after all, but then Boots retreats to his bed, not a word spoken, and it feels so much like a good-bye that Bruno has to shut his eyes even tighter against any more goddamn fag tears.

They ride the rest of the week out in a silence too frosty to even be cordial, and even Edward seems to feel a little sheepish because he says, “Good morning,” to them both as a unit, like he expects them to be able to just pick up where they left off, but they can’t, of course they can’t, and so neither of them says anything back to him, just let the quiet stretch on and on.

 

IX. FEBRUARY 14, 1989

Bruno goes home. They don’t talk, and they don’t talk, and then they talk and it’s awful: Boots tells Bruno never to speak to him again, that Edward was right; and Bruno can hear the underlying, jagged point, the one that hurts more coming out than it does going in––that he seeps like a poison or a nerve gas, that he’s a contagion. 

After that Bruno goes back to school and quickly develops what he calls “a situationally effective coping method” and Vicky calls “a drinking problem.”

“Seriously,” she says, watching him grimly batten down the hatches and take another swallow as he dithers over his essay on a possible resolution to the Arab-Israeli conflict, “you’re not enjoying it anymore, and if you’re going to become a college statistic and not even have any fun on the way there, that’s just wrong.”

“Nothing is wrong,” Bruno says, which is a lie so blatant he can feel it rattle between his teeth, “and I am not an alcoholic.” 

Vicky rolls her eyes and scoffs, “Yeah, sure, Mr. I Have No Problems But I’m Drinking Alone On A Tuesday Afternoon.”

“You’re here,” Bruno points out meanly, which Vicky promptly rectifies. He goes back to his essay, but he feels stuck and the lukewarm half-case of Natty Ice he stole from his roommate’s frat brother friends isn’t helping; it’s an impossible assignment, impossible on purpose, one of the hideous exercises in hypothetical critical thinking that make Bruno want to drop out and run away and die in the woods somewhere because if he’s useless in his own stupid life, how is he supposed to figure out a way to resolve the horror of decades full of other people’s spilled blood and shattered bone?

(Cathy and Diane made them a joint Valentine’s Day card in the allegedly award-winning Arts and Crafts program, which Miss Scrimmage teaches herself because she’d always, at least according to Cathy who was turning into some kind of stealthy Scrim-protégée in order to learn all of Miss Scrimmage’s most intimate secrets for a reason neither Bruno nor Melvin nor even Diane had yet discovered, had a dab hand at the finer arts. 

“This fact is questionable,” Diane admitted, her mouth twisted to the side, “but look––here.” She and Cathy handed over a true monstrosity of a card, pink and red and glittery with a variety of lavender lace accents tacked on at appropriate intervals.

“Miss Scrimmage thinks we are modern art prodigies, basically, dissecting and parodying the nature of the holiday in our very celebration of it, and we want you to be the first recipients of our genius,” Cathy said primly, and then ruined it by cackling. “Go on, open it.”

So Bruno did, with a crackle and a brief staticky flash of light, because Bruno was always going to be the one of them who opens mysterious packages without thinking, and got a split lip for his trouble.

“Oh God,” said Diane, rushing forward, “sorry, the spring under the pop-up must have come loose and the flash powder wasn’t supposed to be quite that powerful––”

Cathy looked a little remorseful, too, offering Bruno a hand towel for his lip and shrugging at Melvin when he crossed his arms at her. “It was just supposed to come forward and say ‘Roses are red’ on it,” she explained. “We must have gotten carried away.”

Bruno brushed off the towel and grabbed Melvin around the shoulder, marching him towards the window even as he waved good-bye to the two girls. “That’s okay,” he said, “I’ll take Melvin as my Valentine, you two can continue on getting carried away with each other.”)

He doesn’t figure out the essay and he doesn’t figure out his life, but Vicky comes back and strokes his hair away from his face while he feels sick and exhausted and doesn’t do either of those things, so at least he’s got company at the bottom of the barrel.

“You don’t look so good,” Vicky says.

He turns over and hides his face in her jean-clad thighs, clutching at her like a lifeline, and if he were anyone else or if this were a music video the position might even be kind of sexy, but instead he’s a fag and he’s going to die alone and she’s stuck taking care of him because he will always, always drag everyone who cares about him down into the dirt. “I don’t feel so good,” he mumbles.

“Oh, Bruno,” she sighs.

 

X. MARCH 17, 1989

Bruno is drinking green beer. Bruno has been drinking green beer since about eight o’ clock in the morning, but then, so has everyone else on campus, and he even makes it to class on time, so suck it, Vicky Webster.

He suffers through Calc I, which he’s taking because apparently Georgetown cares whether their students are well-rounded, and then through Macroeconomics lecture, which is infinitely more interesting although mostly because once Bruno puts himself back together and turns into a person again instead of some kind of green-beer-drinking specter, he still plans on changing the world someday, and anyway, Vicky says when she finds him back in his room afterwards, “Something prefixed with ‘macro’ plays right into your delusions of grandeur.”

“Shut up, I do not have delusions of grandeur,” Bruno says. Vicky has taken the beer out of his unresisting hand and dumped it down the sink, which is a bit of a waste––but honestly, Bruno thinks, thank God, because no man can put that much processed food dye in his system and think he’s going to come out all right, and he doesn’t have enough motivation to stop on his own.

But then Vicky comes stomping back into the room, her face a mask of fury, and says, “Get up.”

“What?” says Bruno, since he’s not down exactly, just sort of lounging against bed and the wall.

“Get up,” she insists, and kicks him when he doesn’t move.

“Jesus!” he says, unsuccessfully trying to fend off her pointy toes, and stands. “I’m up, I’m up, what?” 

“Get the fuck out of here, Walton,” Vicky says, her voice totally devoid of emotion, which is how he knows he’s in real trouble because Boots is just the same way––

(The first prank, the first big one, the one that really put them on the map, was also the first time Melvin stopped speaking to Bruno for more than a couple hours. They snuck into the kitchen under the pretense of doing the breakfast dishes as punishment and planted bright green food dye in the carrot soup, which was hilarious until it turned out Herman Schneidermeister was allergic to some anonymous substance in the chemical compound of FD&C Green Number 3, and had to be sent to the hospital for an epinephrine shot.

Herman was okay and they never got caught, but Melvin looked sickened and even Bruno, who wasn’t given to guilt if there was no immediate gratification for it, felt pretty bad, and then of course there was the fact that Melvin totally shut down on him, wouldn’t even ask him to pass the salt at dinner or to move his shoes when he left them in the doorway. 

It was awful, being on the end of this kind of total black-out; Bruno thrived on other people, and at this point, he’d even take outright conflict if only he could get it––but Melvin wouldn’t give him anything, and it was like being choked out or starved, like it was the end of the apocalypse and he was the one left standing.

“Look, I’m sorry,” he tried.

“Yeah, me too,” said Melvin, which wasn’t silence but was about as close as you could get to it while still saying something.)

––and he leaves, he weaves deftly past her and doesn’t say anything on the way out. 

The air is crisp with the beginnings of spring, and in the bleaching late-afternoon sunlight Bruno becomes viscerally, embarrassingly aware that his hair is in the truly disgusting itchy-dirty state that means it’s been a week or more since he’s showered. Time slips away, somehow.

He goes for a walk that stumbles its way into a meander, and by the time he gets back the sun’s slipped down behind the horizon and the air’s turned a blue-gray corner into twilight. He opens his door––Vicky is sitting on his bed, which is made, and swinging her feet. 

“Hi,” he says.

“Hi,” she says, shortly, then physically droops and pats the bed beside her.

He hops up, toes his shoes off his feet, and stares down at his socks; the left one has a hole in it. He can see toe hair through it. God, he is gross.

“I’m just worried about you,” says Vicky, and sneaks her arm around his waist.

“So you cleaned my room?” Bruno asks, bemused, because she has.

“Yeah, well, get me started on something and I’m the fucking Energizer Bunny,” Vicky snorts, and tugs him a little closer so he has to lean into her.

“I don’t deserve it,” Bruno whispers, meaning, _you_ ; he doesn’t; he’s a mess and he needs to clean his act up, but he’s used up his lifetime apportionment of Get Out Of Jail Free cards and just because Vicky doesn’t know that yet doesn’t mean she can’t learn it.

“Bruno Walton,” Vicky hisses, “shut the fuck up.”

“But it’s true,” he mumbles. “I don’t.” 

“Listen to me,” says Vicky, “just because you are crazy right now and your ex-boyfriend––”

“He wasn’t––” Bruno starts.

“––your ex-boyfriend broke your heart and you smell like a subway car at two in the morning doesn’t mean you don’t deserve things,” she finishes, fiercely. “So fucking live up to all the things I’m giving you, asshole.”

Well, there’s his life in a nutshell, and he has never cried so much as he has in the past three months, goddammit. “I’ll never be manly enough to make the cover of GQ now,” he laments, startling a laugh out of Vicky, and they sit together and he cries on her shoulder some more and she strokes his hair like he’s five years old, and a little while later, Bruno throws up twice and promises never to touch anything so noxiously green ever again, so long as they both shall live.

 

XI. APRIL 1, 1989

“Hey, Bruno, it’s me. I know I haven’t talked to you in––a while. Way too long. Embarrassingly long actually, but I had some––I mean, I had some stuff to think about. Anyway you’re supposed to be home now so I hope you get this message, or that Stella, hi Stella, or your parents, hi Mr. and Mrs. Walton, tell you that I called. Um, please call me back. It’s really important, it’s about what Edward said, it’s––well, Bruno, Bruno, I was wrong, I was really fu––I mean, I was really really wrong, and I need to talk to you. Call me back. This was Boots by the way.”

“Bruno, it’s me. Uh, Boots. I left you a message a while ago but I don’t know if you ever got it and I don’t know if you’ve got an answering machine at the university, so here Anyway, I really need to talk to you, so even if you can’t actually call if you could write a note or something, I’d really appreciate it. See you soon, I hope.”

“Bruno, please call me, I need you. I mean, I need to talk to you. It’s urgent. You might even say it is an emergency.”

“Bruno, please.”

“Hi, Mr. and Mrs. Walton. This is Boots. Please tell Bruno to call me when he can. Thank you.” 

 

XII. MAY 30, 1989

Bruno is waiting for Boots in the area outside of the terminal, because even though they have spoken about six times since New Year’s, he’s not about to abandon Boots to the vagaries of the BWI parking lot.

“Hi,” he says when Boots gets out of security. He doesn’t know where to put his hands and has to try three different positions before he finally settles them by his side, hanging awkwardly.

“Hi,” Boots answers, waving a little. He’s still taller than Bruno and blonder than usual, although that could be because it’s been so long since Bruno’s seen him, and also a little sunken in on himself, his duffel bag thrown over one shoulder. “How are you?”

Bruno shrugs. There is no answer that Boots would want to hear, or in any case, no answer Bruno wants to give him. “Let’s go,” he says, low, jangling the keys in his pocket. Boots nods, switching his bag from left shoulder to right. Bruno feels like he should offer to take it, then feels like that would be presumptuous, then feels like Boots should carry his own goddamn bag anyway.

They have always been a lot of things, but the air between them has never been so dead.

Boots turns on the radio, flips past the usual bubblegum pop bullshit that Bruno likes to hum along to in order to annoy everyone who knows him, past the experimental station that Bruno hates and then the one that he secretly loves. “Oldies okay?” he asks, finally, his hand hovering on the dial, while Diana Ross pleads with some unknown man to stop keeping her hanging on.

“Sure,” Bruno says. “Oldies are fine.”

(Melvin had found a child’s toy radio somewhere in town and had promptly and joyfully set it up on his desk; it was tiny and cheap and had the worst reception known to man, but he loved it anyway and played it constantly. Bruno dreamed of murdering the thing, bashing it to tiny pink smithereens, and then, since it wasn’t the radio’s fault but rather the fault of radio station, of bashing DJ Kool’s head in with a baseball bat––not enough to seriously injure him, just enough to damage the part of his brain that picked out what music was good, for God’s sake, because the answer was never going to be polka––but finally restrained himself on all fronts and only surreptitiously fumbled with the controls until it started pouring out something Bruno recognized from his childhood, his parents’ date nights on their living room couch, listening to records they’d had for years and years, scratchy with use, their hands clasped loosely and joyfully together, while he and Stella were forced to read books or talk to each other. 

Melvin walked in on Bruno bellowing along to [Nancy Sinatra](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRkovnss7sg) and raised his eyebrows. “Having fun?” he asked, dropping his backpack on the floor and throwing himself down on the bed.

“You bet,” Bruno answered, unashamed; at least it wasn’t polka. “I love this song. My parents used to play it when I was little.”

“Yeah?” Melvin asked, interested, “huh, my parents never did with this kind of music, they liked––more rock, I guess,” and from where Bruno was lying upside-down on his bed, Melvin nodding along to the song, a bit sunburnt along the back of his neck and the edge of his nose, his cheekbones, he looked happy and kind of messy and a little defiant––and Bruno had been walked all over, could feel the footprints from his shoulder blades to his knee caps, a welcome ache.

“Pass the salt, Boots?” he asked the next night at dinner, to try it out.

The whole table paused and stared at him, which was a pretty regular occurrence. “Who?” asked Perry Elbert cautiously.

“Boots,” Bruno repeated, shrugging, sure that Melvin would get it if only he waited long enough. And then he did, eyebrows quirked up, passing Bruno the salt slowly, like he was testing it out too.

“So you’re Boots now?” Sidney Rampulskey asked, before getting his elbow caught in Perry’s water glass and ending up sprawled between Mark and Elmer, who was just passing by on his way to pick up some particularly interesting mold samples from the head chef, and in the confusion, as Sidney was led away to the infirmary, Boots leaned into Bruno and said, “So I’m Boots now,” and Bruno had nodded and said, “Yeah, Boots, yeah, you are.”)

The drive passes mostly in silence, just the radio jangling cheerfully and Boots nervously rolling his window up and down, letting in short blasts of summer warmth before remembering Bruno’s shitty air conditioning is on and closing it again. 

Bruno suddenly feels like he’s going to implode, every muscle screaming to get out of his parents’ cramped car, and he as soon as the shoulder gets wide enough he pulls over and has to undo his seatbelt and open his window and rest his head on the his hands where they’re clutching onto the steering wheel.

“This is less scenic than last time,” Boots quips, looking out the window at the metal divider and the yellow flower-studded grass peeking out behind it, and Bruno feels gutted.

“How can you _joke_?” he asks, his voice cracking like it always does when he’s stressed. “I can’t––I can’t––God, Boots,” and he’s not crying because he made a rather belated New Year’s Resolution to stop that, but he’s definitely _something_. 

“Bruno––” says Boots, his voice stricken. He shifts in his seat, but Bruno is not looking up until he stops feeling like he’s going to break into pieces, like his heart’s cracked into shards. “I don’t know what else to do.”

“Maybe apologize again,” Bruno offers. “That might help my fragile psyche start to heal.”

Boots huffs out something that could charitably be called a laugh. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I will always be sorry.”

“What for?” Bruno asks.

Boots groans and kicks at his shin, too gently to do any damage. “For being a jerk who listens to my little brother, stupid,” he says, then sighs. A pause. “For not being your friend,” he says more quietly. “Dumbest thing I’ve ever done.”

“Yeah?” Bruno says, and braces himself on the steering wheel before he sits up and looks at Boots. 

“Yeah,” Boots confirms, but he’s not looking at Bruno––he’s tipped back in the car seat, eyes closed, looking pretty close to upset himself. “Definitely not my best move.”

“Okay,” Bruno agrees. “So where do we go from here?”

“And isn’t that the sixty-four thousand dollar question,” Boots murmurs, opening his eyes and turning to look at Bruno.

“Do you have sixty-four thousand dollars? Because I could use the money,” Bruno says, grinning, which is more difficult than it’s ever been before, and starts the car.

“As if I’d give it to you even if I had it lying around somewhere,” Boots scoffs as they roll back onto the highway. “You’d just spend it on a campaign of terror and annex Canada or something.”

Bruno shakes his head. “Oh, please, like Canada is worth any political capital––I’d only annex Canada if you were still there.”

“That’s the most romantic thing anyone has ever said to me,” says Boots, and reaches over to take his hand.

Bruno doesn’t let go.

 

(XIII. JUNE 23, 1989

 Boots stays, and he stays, and he stays, because they have a lot of talking to do, and he even leaves Bruno’s parents grocery money in plain white envelopes that he steals from Bruno’s desk so they’re too busy being charmed by his obvious good breeding and covertly returning the money to ask him to leave.

Frankly, Bruno is pretty happy with the situation––he wants Boots to stay and keep on charming his parents forever, although probably somebody other than Stella is going to figure out that Boots hasn’t actually slept on Bruno’s trundle bed since his second night here, so on second thought maybe it’s more accurate to say that he wants Boots to stay with him and they can go ahead and take his parents out of the equation.

The doorbell rings one morning and Stella runs to get it––she’s expecting a package she ordered from a magazine or something, God, she’s getting so old and so adept at using their parents’ credit card, Bruno is unbearably proud of her––then calls uncertainly down the hallway, “Bruno? There’s a girl here for you.”

“Should I be jealous?” whispers Boots as they hurry towards the front door.

“Probably not?” Bruno whispers back, trying to remember through the haze of his three drunken months if he could have possibly done anything stupid enough to bring a strange girl to his doorstep, but then he sees Vicky and everything makes a lot more sense.

“Hi!” he says.

“Hi!” she says back, then peers over his shoulder at Boots. 

“This is Vicky,” Bruno tells Boots. 

“Hello,” says Boots politely, holding out a hand. “I’m Boots.”

Vicky’s eyes narrow and she promptly steps forward and slaps him in the face. “You’re an asshole,” she says.

“Oh my god, Vicky,” says Bruno, hideously embarrassed, but:

“Yeah,” Boots agrees, “I was an asshole, but I’m trying not to do that anymore.” He holds out his hand again. “Nice to meet you.”

“Well played,” says Vicky, and shakes the hand. “I’m not convinced this is nice yet.”

“I’ll do my best,” Boots promises, and Bruno is caught between wanting to kiss him, hug Vicky, and sink into the floor to let them kill and eat each other in the inevitable conclusion of whatever pissing contest is clearly destined to happen between them. 

Stella pops up with a pitcher of lemonade and a huge shit-eating grin on her face. “Hi!” she says. “I’m Stella! Bruno’s sister, by the way,” she adds, like it isn’t obvious. She hands a glass of lemonade to Vicky, shoves the pitcher in Boots’s hands, and leans forward. “Tell me how I can be like you,” she stage whispers.

“Oh, young grasshopper, I can already tell the sun is just beginning to rise on your glory,” Vicky says, clapping her on the shoulder. 

“Mother of God,” Bruno says to Boots as Vicky introduces Stella to third-wave feminism, “what have I done? They’re going to take over the country and I’ll be cast aside like rotten fruit.”

“I wouldn’t worry about it,” Boots says, and reaches down to secretly squeeze his hand. “You can always annex Canada.”)

**Author's Note:**

> You can find a timestamp [here](http://archiveofourown.org/works/358074).
> 
> I went into some kind of fugue state and wrote the last eight thousand words of this in two days, which is sort of impossibly fast for me, but Kormanland treated me well while I was out of it. Just so you know I played fast and loose with a couple things––third-wave feminism didn't really hit its stride or get called third-wave feminism until the mid-nineties, at least according to Wikipedia; and as a ~~political science~~ government major (Georgetown, what is your life?) Bruno wouldn't really have to take Calc I, apparently he'd have to take Probability and Statistics.
> 
> Three guesses where the title comes from and the first two don't count!


End file.
